Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Iraqis flee as battle continues

BAGHDAD - Scores of terrified Iraqis fled a besieged town Sunday, waving white flags and hauling their belongings to escape a second day of fighting between U.S. Marines and al-Qaida-led militants along the Syrian border. U.S. and Iraqi troops battled insurgents house to house, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. commander of the joint force, Col. Stephen W. Davis, said late Sunday that his troops had moved about halfway through Husaybah, a market town along the Euphrates River about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.

At least 36 insurgents have been killed since the operation, named Operation Steel Curtain, began Saturday and about 200 men have been detained, Davis said. He did not give a breakdown of nationalities of the detainees. Many were expected to be from a proinsurgent Iraqi tribe.

Davis would not comment on U.S. and Iraqi government casualties but said the militants were putting up a tough fight because "this area is near and dear to the the insurgents, particularly the foreign fighters.

Earlier Sunday, Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad that none of the 3,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops had been killed so far.

The Marines said in a statement that about 450 people had taken refuge in a vacant housing area in Husaybah under the control of Iraqi forces. Others were thought to have fled to relatives in nearby towns and villages in the predominantly Sunni Arab area of Anbar province.

U.S. officials have described Husaybah, which used to have a population of about 30,000, as a stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Husaybah had long been identified as an entry point for foreign fighters, weapons and ammunition entering from Syria.

The U.S.-led assault includes about 1,000 Iraqi soldiers. It will serve as a major test of the fledgling army's capability to battle insurgents - seen as essential to enabling Washington to draw down its 157,000-strong military presence.

[Last modified November 7, 2005, 01:11:04]